Service pack 2 for Exchange 2010 has now been released
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/05/17/announcing-exchange-2010-service-pack-2.aspx
One feature that has been long overdue is the ability to segment the GAL so that only certain elements of the GAL are visible to specific groups of users (EG: Only let System Administrator’s see Administrative Accounts…..)
I’ll post a full update once I have applied it to my Lab environment…
So I had recently installed Exchange 2010 SP1 on my Lab Domain and was struggling to get OWA working – all I got was a blank page and no Form-Based Authentication logon..
After a lot of suggestions about recreating OWA to redirects in IIS and a Web.Config file, i eventually stumbled across this post..
http://www.msexchangeblog.nl/2010/05/11/blank-page-in-owa-fix-for-exchange-2010/
Which basically says to run a powershell script buried within Exchange to update the CAS
Voila! All now up and running..
Yesterday, I too the plunge and upgraded my Exchange 2010 server from Windows Server 2008 SP2 to Server 2008 R2 SP1
All went well, and everything appeared to be working, it only took a few hours which was good.
However, when I checked my databases, I found that the System Mailbox DB (The one called “Mailbox Database xxxxxxx”) was dismmounted, and was refusing to remount itself..
After about an hour of checking, and failing, I eventually had to do a hard repair with eseutil /p and remove all the log files.
Fortunately, despite the copious warnings about data loss, I eventually got the thing mounted and all is well again.
So, if ever you decide to do this can I make one helpful suggestion to you all..
DISMOUNT ALL YOUR DATABASES FIRST TO ENSURE THEY ARE CLEANLY SHUTDOWN!
Microsoft have again proven that they don’t thoroughly test their updates before releasing them.
Last week as part of the bumper Patch Tuesday, they released KB2449742
So after I deployed this to my servers, imagine my surprise when I rebooted my Exchange 2010 server and discovered that all attempts at connecting to the Management Console resulted in the MMC crashing out, along with the event viewer and a few other MMC’s as well
I couldn’t even connect via a remote EMC either..
Typically, I had a lot of change to make with new mailboxes to create and old one needing removing..
Time to hit Google and fortunately came across this article which pointed me in the direction of the update in question
It suggested that I remove KB2449742 and reboot the server.
Thankfully this has indeed resolved the problem and I can now manage Exchange again!
